The Arabs, however, invent a few
little songs, which the natives have much pleasure in learning, and
the women sing some of the negro airs very prettily, while grinding
their corn.
The songs of the kadankas (singing girls), who answer to the Egyptian
almehs, is Soudanic. Their musical instrument is called rhababe, or
erhab. It is an excavated hemisphere, made from the shell of a gourd
lime, and covered with leather; to this a long handle is fixed, on
which is stretched a string of horse hairs, longitudinally closed,
and compact as one cord, about the thickness of a quill. This is
played upon with a bow. Captain Lyon says, the women really produced
a very pleasing, though a wild melody; their songs were pretty and
plaintive, and generally in the Soudan language, which is very
musical. What is rather singular, he heard the same song sung by the
same woman that Horneman mentions, and she recollected having seen
that traveller at the castle.
The lower classes and the slaves, who, in point of colour and
appearance, are the same, labour together. The freeman has, however,
only one inducement to work, which is hunger; he has no notion of
laying by any thing for the advantage of his family, or as a reserve
for himself in his old age; but if by any chance he obtains money, he
remains idle until it is expended, and then returns unwillingly to
work.
